Re: rm hack

[Chris Palmer <cecibean@bitstream.net>]

Nice idea. Couple comments.

On 08 Oct  Alex Kirk wrote:

> > long owrite;

Probably overkill.

> > 	while ((ch = getopt(argc, argv, "dfiPRrWo:")) != -1)

Why not 

	getopt(argc, argv, "dfiP:RrW")

and have P default to 3 (current functionality)? Makes for a simpler
command line.

Finally, don't put too much stock in this overwrite function. It's nice
to have, but judging from discussions on BUGTRAQ a few years ago (and
possibly since), it's generally agreed that mere overwriting doesn't
make the magnetic image of a file completely go away. There are ways to
recover files from disks, even if the disks have undergone severe
physical damage. Iirc, the outcome of the BUGTRAQ discussion was that
melting was the way to go.

Even if you overwrite the current disk blocks a file lives on, you can't
be sure that you've overwritten all the blocks it has ever lived on. The
filesystem may shuffle things around for optimization purposes, or your
editor may have created temporary files on disk that are now gone from
the file system but exist still as shadows on the disk.


-- 
Chris